News & Commentary

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed suit against the City of Pawtucket, charging city officials with blatantly violating a state law that restricts random drug testing in the workplace.

Claiming that not enough has been done to protect the privacy rights of patients, the Rhode Island ACLU today filed suit against the R.I. Department of Health (DOH), challenging the inadequacy of rules the agency has adopted to implement a centralized database of patient health care records in the state. The Health Information Exchange (HIE), established by legislation (link to bill as enacted) approved by the General Assembly in 2008, will allow medical personnel to routinely access a patient’s entire medical file, including mental health records and other sensitive medical information.

In court papers released today, the ACLU has fired back at attempts by Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah Jeremiah and the state’s Truancy Court magistrates to remove two National ACLU attorneys from a lawsuit challenging the legality of various Court practices, based on the attorneys’ exercise of their free speech rights. The judges have claimed that National ACLU attorneys Robin Dahlberg and Yelena Konanova engaged in “reckless professional misconduct” by publicly commenting about the lawsuit at the time it was filed, but the ACLU calls the judges’ effort “nothing more than a heavy-handed attempt to stifle the kind of criticism of governmental activities inherent in our democratic system.”

For the second time in little more than a year, the Rhode Island ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, challenging the constitutionality of a state law that discriminates against new political parties. Calling the law “unfair, inequitable and constitutionally infirm,” the lawsuit, filed today by RI ACLU volunteer attorney Mark Freel, seeks to overturn a statute that allows residents to make a donation on their tax return to political parties through a “nonpartisan account,” but excludes new parties from the disbursement.

In a letter faxed today to Coventry School District Superintendent Kenneth DiPietro, the Rhode Island ACLU called for an immediate revision to the school’s dress code policy, which apparently bans students from displaying any images of weapons. Pointing to this week’s highly-publicized incident when eight year old student David Morales was barred from wearing a patriotic hat because it included toy soldiers carrying guns, the ACLU called the dress code clearly unconstitutional. The RI ACLU letter, from executive director Steven Brown, noted:

In an important victory for children’s rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston today reversed a federal district court ruling that had thrown out a case against the Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF) for the mistreatment of foster children in its care. RI ACLU volunteer attorneys Andrew Prescott and Steven Richard had filed a "friend of the court" brief last August urging the appellate court to take this action.

A federal district court today rejected attempts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be dropped from the federal lawsuit filed by the R.I. ACLU on behalf of the family of a detainee who died while in the custody of immigration officials at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, the 34-year-old Chinese detainee, died in August 2008 after complaining for months to prison officials about being in excruciating pain. Guards and medical personnel at Wyatt continually accused Ng of faking his illness and denied him medical care, and he was only diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and a broken spine less than a week before he died.

The Division of Motor Vehicles has taken a first step to address an ACLU lawsuit filed last month challenging the legality of DMV actions in sending out deficient and confusing notices of alleged decades-old traffic violations to over 1,500 residents. In response to that suit, the DMV has mailed those individuals a new notice advising them of their right to a meaningful hearing to contest the violations, and creating a mechanism to lift in the interim any license suspension that may have been imposed.

The Woonsocket Education Department has agreed to stop sending children to Rhode Island’s unlawfully operated truancy court system and to end its participation in the program completely. The agreement follows a pending class-action lawsuit filed in March by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Rhode Island charging that the state’s truancy court system is devoid of due process protections for children in violation of state and federal law.